Flying with Altered Time

[Mark Hargrove]

Keith,

Out of curiosity, whose responsibility was it to maintain spacing so that your go-around at MYF wasn't necessary? You were flying an ILS approach on an IFR clearance (and could have been in actual IMC), so it doesn't seem like it should have been your responsibility to ensure spacing. I seem to recall, though, that either SoCal or the tower told you that you were following another airplane on approach, and you acknowledged that. And, obviously, the controller was concerned about the spacing when they asked you to side-step, but after you indicated "unable" you were cleared to proceed with the 28R approach. Shouldn't you have been vectored at that point if the controller couldn't assure separation? I also seem to recall hearing the tower asking the guy in front of you to expedite leaving the runway (which clearly didn't happen!).

If the situation gets traced all the way back to "root cause", where did things actually start to go wrong?

It's particularly ironic that you'd been instructed earlier to descend to a lower altitude to allow the Lancair to overtake you!

-M.

[Alex Stjepanovic]

It's particularly ironic that you'd been instructed earlier to descend to a lower altitude to allow the Lancair to overtake you!

What exactly do you mean by this?

The descent given to Keith, and other instructions given to him and to the other plane, were for spacing, which was achieved and kept, until the very short final. I never used irony to make decisions with those instructions, so I'm quite interested to find out what's behind this.

[Keith Smith]

Alex, I think he means it's ironic that the aircraft started out behind me then ultimately caused me to go around.

Mark, IFR separation was maintained throughout the operation AFAIK, however, the runway occupancy time of the Lancair ended up being longer than expected (full length roll out and slow exit).

[Mark Hargrove]

Yep, that's exactly what I meant by "ironic". I didn't think controllers would deliberately slow you down just to let other people overtake you. Although, that said, there's nothing necessarily wrong with them doing that. To you. Repeatedly. Take note, guys.

I also didn't mean to imply that IFR separation was lost -- I meant runway separation. It seems like that could have been avoided, since it sounded like an issue might have been emerging before the first airplane was even on the ground.

And believe me -- I'm not trying to pin blame on anybody about anything! I'm just trying to understand what happened and why as learning for me.

-M.

[Keith Smith]

Mark, I think they're good questions! ATC gave me the hint a few times that I was 4-5 miles in trail behind an aircraft, and they gave me the courtesy of providing me with this groundspeed twice.

You'll also notice tower did ask the aircraft on the runway to exit without delay, but I don't think the pilot heard it....in fact I KNOW the pilot didn't hear it because I was speaking with him later on the DTP TS server and he said he was wondering if the tower was going to ask him to hurry off, but since he didn't, he took his time getting to the end.

That's how it unfolded, near as I can remember. Small links in the chain, as always Not an accident chain in this case, thankfully.